Standing Before the Gates of Paradise – A Reflection

We were pleased to receive this rather beautiful reflection from Jan McGuire, co-Chair of AREIAC, on RE in the Curriculum and Assessment review after our focus week on the topic. Jan wrote this before the publication of the interim report. How do you respond to the questions she asks?

Enter the Cast Court rooms at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and your senses are catapulted into an ancient world; you are filled with awe and wonder. As a lover of beautiful artefacts linked to culture and Religious Education the V&A is an inspiring safe place. The spectacular Weston Cast Court features more than 60 of the V&A’s finest 19th century reproductions of Italian Renaissance monuments including the seven-and-a-half metre tall set of electrotype doors. They are a copy of the shimmering gilded bronze gates (1425-52) designed by the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti for the north entrance of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence. The original gates were so beautiful that Michelangelo is said to have referred to these doors as fit to be the “Gates of Paradise” (It. Porte del Paradiso).

Being surrounded by stunning casts it’s easy to forget the painting that sits high on the wall. It’s a copy of Raphael’s School of Athens. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Minerva the goddess of wisdom and justice, Pythagoras and Archimedes are all featured whose collective intellect would be a useful addition to the thinking required at this present time in Religious Education.

At the centre of the composition stand Plato and Aristotle whose two different schools of thought, the physical world vs. the spiritual world, would dominate the Western thought from antiquity up to the late 17th century. The philosophical divisions that existed, even then, continue today in our subject community. Our dialogue and writing remains refreshingly diverse and nuanced, and in our associations, such as the Association of Religious Education Inspectors Advisers and Consultants (AREIAC) that is certainly the case.

The School of Athens is one of four wall frescoes in the Stanza Della Segnatura. Each wall represents one of the four branches of knowledge during the Renaissance—theology, literature, justice, and philosophy. Today we may wish to add other disciplines such as social science, ethics, hermeneutics, as being key to a rich Religious Educational curriculum.

So, imagine, I am standing before the ‘Gates of Paradise’ with Raphael’s School of Athens in view, reflecting on the present, times past and looking to the future. I am mindful of the great philosophers, intellectually ambitious academics, scholars of Religion and Theology, influential faith and community leaders and Religious Education giants that have shaped our current world.

I see the ‘Gates of Paradise’ and Raphael’s School of Athens as great metaphors. The gate keepers responding to the Curriculum and Assessment Review will have a heavy burden as they open the enormous gates to our subject community. We may desire the beautiful gates to reveal a ‘finished picture’ of beauty, tranquillity and stability. What stands behind the gates is unlikely to be paradise. At best we may hope to find a ‘bold’ and ‘reimagined’ educational landscape that has taken the ‘golden elements’ of a long tradition and merged it with the most up to date research, policies, pedagogies and practice. It will be an education fit for the modern multi-religious and multi-secular world. It will have reimagined learning spaces and will be more inclusive, equitable and accessible. It will have ‘evolved’ and will continually ‘evolve’ as global challenges and opportunities are encountered. It will enrich and motivate learners and foster a lifelong love of learning in all pupils.

It will embrace the positives of a lived-religion and worldviews approach and the wealth that at best is experienced through collaboration with our faith communities through our Standing Advisory committees on Religious Education (SACRE).

It will build upon the best Religious Education Agreed Syllabi around the country based on research, academic rigour, academic and community collaboration, considered policy and literature reviews such as those commissioned by the Religious Education Council (REC), and considered pedagogy, rich and sequential learning and knowledge; celebrating an iterative approach that is ongoing.

Personally, I am hoping that the gate keepers will only open these immensely heavy gates when they have thoroughly explored and applied the collective wisdom of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Minerva the goddess of wisdom and justice.

It is a huge ask and an enormous task;

“The curriculum and assessment system must ensure that young people leave education prepared for life and work, equipped with the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to thrive and become well-rounded citizens, who appreciate the diversity and pluralism of our society.” Curriculum and Assessment Review: Call for evidence

Before we push these gates open, we still have unanswered questions.

• What does the Curriculum and Assessment Review have in store for us in the RE community?
• Where will RE find itself within the big education shake-up?
• Will RE be identified as a subject that can evolve alongside other subjects in the national curriculum?
• Will it retain an element of regional or local input?
• Will RE be a candidate for ‘revolution’ – a complete ‘reimagining’. Does our community have the will for this?

We certainly wouldn’t want to destabilise a fragile ecosystem by creating something impossible to implement in schools hard pressed to find teachers of Religious Education.

Neither do we want to find RE ‘shelved’ as ‘too hot to handle’, too difficult, too broken. I am worried that comments such as ‘Let’s leave RE until last – let’s deal with the quick fixes first’ may creep in.

It is important to keep vocalising the best things that are already here and that can be built upon. It is important to celebrate our wonderful, skilled, passionate and inspiring RE teachers, Leadership Programme candidates, RE Leads and Advisers. It is important to shout loudly about our RE community and collaborative working with academics, religious and worldviews communities.

Our community needs to be present in the ‘Gate Keepers Lodge’. We need to be included in the process of opening those heavy doors to a new world. My hope is that the Curriculum and Assessment Review will set out a bold agenda for transforming Religious Education, in collaboration with those that have nurtured and protected it fiercely.

I believe that the Gates of Paradise will open to reveal a new, changed, evolved Religious Education landscape. It has already taken time to get this far on our journey. It will continue to take time. Changes do not have to be made instantly but can be carefully planned and implemented over a rolling period of five years.

The Gates of Paradise are heavy and burdensome, but beautiful, inspiring and so full of hope for a gilded future.

It’s Time For Bold Change In The Curriculum – TeachingTimes https://www.teachingtimes.com/its-time-for-bold-change-in-the-curriculum/#:~:text=Transforming%20curriculum,rather%20than%20application%20and%20utility.

The Story Behind Raphael’s Masterpiece ‘The School of Athens’
By Jessica Stewart on March 21, 2022 https://mymodernmet.com/school-of-athens-raphael/